European Stage, Khvalynsk

Good day!!!

After getting back, a few days of recovering, a week of re-acclimatising, I'm writing a short report on the trip…

The road to Samara turned out to be surprisingly not boring and not tiring. We got through customs brilliantly, they didn't even open our bags. On the way back, true, everything was different, they searched us top to bottom, but in the end it all went fine – they didn't get as far as the spearguns.

We stayed at a tent camp, forming our own little "embassy" of Azerbaijan, with a flag hung over our camp. Of course, the impressions of the Volga can't be put into words: huge expanses – 7 kilometres wide. The competition area – 50 km in different directions. Other teams arrived at the competition with their own boats, echo sounders and GPS navigators. Spearfishing itself goes like this: with a depth map of the Volga in their GPS navigator, the hunters mark the most promising spots and, heading to that spot, pin down the depth and bottom relief more precisely. On top of that, the echo sounders often show whether there are fish in that spot. After diving a bit, they figure out how "fishy" the spot is, save the point, and during the competition they head out to a few specific spots picked in advance.

We'd been promised help sorting out a boat and with our accommodation in the tent camp, which was done very conscientiously. The guy in charge of accommodation, Nikolai, one of the spearfishers from the "Kitoboy" club, was really warm towards us and helped with lots of things, even ones that weren't part of his job.

On the first day, while Pasha and his family were doing registration, I decided to dive near the tent camp. According to Nikolai, somewhere 1.5-2 km from the shore, beyond the fairway - where the heavy cargo ships pass – there used to be an island that stretched upstream and split the river in two. After a hydroelectric dam was built downstream, this island ended up underwater and was full of snags and deep holes. I have to say, it took me 35 minutes swimming flat out to get to those buoys, because I was scared the 100-metre-long cargo ships might not notice me (though I did have a signal buoy attached to my belt). After crossing the fairway (25 metres deep), I lay on the water, caught my breath, and started diving. That's when the most interesting part began…

I've been used to the water since I was 5 and have never been afraid of it. Visibility at the surface was 2-3 metres. Once I got down to 5 metres, a black abyss literally started swallowing me, I mean I was sinking into such darkness that it made no difference whether I swam with my eyes open or closed. Honestly, I was gripped by such fear that I couldn't force myself to go any further down to the bottom. For half an hour of diving I couldn't bring myself to do it. In the end, I lowered the shaft on its line in front of me and worked out that the depth there was about 9 metres. Interestingly, when you drop to the bottom, after the completely black layer, at 50-80 centimetres from the bottom a much clearer layer suddenly opens up. That's because the whole bottom is covered in small molluscs that filter the water. That was my little victory over myself! I went back to camp in a gloomy state, thinking: how are we going to hunt in blackness like this?! The next day we arranged with a local amateur fisherman that he'd take us around the "fishy spots" in his boat. But as it turned out, there were NO such spots nearby. After two days of looking for fish within 7-8 km of the camp, even crossing to the other bank, we didn't find anything worthwhile. Pasha shot one decent perch. But that wasn't what we'd been counting on. In that desperate state we even had thoughts like: is it even worth taking part? Feeling down, we met up with the Samara spearfishers at their camp, which was on the other side of town. I should say that they couldn't boast of any outstanding results in their usual waters either. Though some of the hunters did have fish. Dazhaev met us, found out we'd been left without fish, and cheered us up with a nice little zander and a few small perch. He mentioned that all the fish shot had been taken by the hunters about 40 km away. So you needed a powerful boat. With our fisherman Vasily, who'd been taking us around for two days, we'd never have got that far …

For the competition day they helped us out with another, more powerful boat so we could go further out. But because of the weather, the first day of the competition was cancelled. Such a stormy wind picked up that GIMS (the State Inspectorate for Small Vessels) banned boats from going out on the water. BUT the official opening ceremony of the European stage of the Russian Championship was held properly, with the mayor's office and the city administration taking part. I finally got handed the suit I'd won at the Black Sea stage. To entertain us and take our minds off the bad weather, the championship sponsors, the company TETIS, held fun joke contests of agility and creativity for the athletes and the fans, of whom there were quite a few.

Over the day the weather calmed down a bit and the next day we did finally get the chance to head out into the "ocean". Even though we had a more powerful boat, luck still wasn't on our side. After spending loads of time getting to the fishy spots, we had an hour left for diving. Which, you'll agree, is very little. Pasha saw a small pike swim past, and apart from palm-sized rudd I didn't see anything serious. So we came to the finish without any fish. If I describe this competition day in detail: the first hour we spent driving to the boat station, then another hour fixing the motor, which the careless ranger hadn't bothered to check beforehand, and instead of the planned hour's trip to the diving spot it took us 2 hours. On top of that, on the way back we ran out of petrol and rowed for about a kilometre and a half. In short, our extreme tour was a success. In a cheerful mood, 1 hour late for the weigh-in, we made it back to camp safe and sound. J We concluded that for competitions at this level you need to be better equipped technically, and at least come in your own car so you can be more mobile.

As clichéd as it sounds: TAKING PART IS WHAT MATTERS!!!! Personally, I'm happy with this trip, I picked up a lot of new stuff when it comes to diving, and I managed to push past myself and dive into the "BLACK ABYSS"! J

Time to get ready for the Azerbaijan Championship!

Good luck, everyone!!!